Friday 25 March 2011

Fairies

Term 2 at Uni = done, so I’m now at home for my easter break! I thought whilst I was home I’d go pick up my A2 textiles work from my old College and looking through it today made me realise how I miss being more creative, the theme for my exam work was passions and obsessions, as I love TinkerBell I chose her as a focal point and incorporated recycling. (If you haven’t seen the TinkerBell movies she is a tinker fairy that makes things and recycles old things lying around such as buttons, nails etc.)

So I came up with the idea of recycling little trinkets and bits of jewellery etc, gaining inspiration from different textile designers along the way such as: Rachel Helens ‘The Juniper Tree’ collection which recycles forgotten treasures of broken and unloved jewellery which is inspired by a love of nature and the dark side of fairy tales. ‘hOle’ which was founded by Julia Gandy, she uses buttons and wire to create unique, colourful and wearable items such as hats, brooches and chokers. ‘Trash Blooms’ also gave me big inspiration as Claire Harris uses buttons and vintage style fabrics to create kitsch fashion accessories mainly incorporating florals.

After all this work I came across a book about fairies which made me think about how fairies could wear this recycled jewellery. I then went on to make small pieces of jewellery for fairies and therefore decided to incorporate my previous work into the idea of fairy dresses, like in the book ‘Fairie-ality’ from the house of Elwand. I started to use different media such as petals, skeleton leaves, buttons, paper, chiffron and leaves etc to create miniature fairy dresses.

Carole Graces ‘Figuratively speaking’ article in ‘Embroidery’ Magazine in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue furthered my idea even more; she makes tiny garments on figures using fragile constructions of fine fabrics, paper and stitching.  

My final pieces were two fairy dresses on little mannequins which I made myself; I used all different kinds of materials again including, paper, floral material, chiffron, skeleton leaves, miniature pearl necklaces, beads, nettings and lots more. Below are some pictures of my process, hope you enjoy!



Necklace and ring I made


Trash Blooms





Some miniature hangers I made with a top and dress I also made


Front view of final pieces

Back view of final pieces

Friday 11 March 2011

Price Tag

I’m addicted to eBay at the minute – spending money that I should be saving for my holiday with my boyfriend to Tunisia in June (sooo excited eakkk!)

Heres some of my latest buys :)
Vintage tan suede ankle boots, made in Italy. 
The thing that drew me to these the most is the little silver buckle, I love it!



Vintage floral corduroy high waisted shorts.
These are just so cute and i'll be wearing them a lot over the Spring/Summer, they are so comfy too! 

Vintage black leather patchwork bag and vintage rose tapestry clutch bag.
I've been using the black bag a lot already for Uni, it has long enough straps to just fit on the shoulder comfortably and big enough to fit all my things in.
I haven't used the clutch yet but I love the tapestry pattern on it and will be using it sometime soon on a night out!